A prominent BitTorrent piracy ring, busted up last fall, is now facing six …

According to an indictment unsealed this week, the four alleged members of the BitTorrent movie release group IMAGiNE have now been charged with one count of "Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Copyright Infringement," four counts of "Criminal Copyright Infringement," and one count of "Distribution of a Work Being Prepared for Commercial Distribution." Each count brings a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison.

The group, which TorrentFreak called "one of the P2P scene’s most prominent release groups," was busted up by federal authorities in September 2011. It is not very common for BitTorrent-related groups to be split apart with federal criminal charges brought against them.

Court documents filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia report that the lead defendant, Jeramiah B. Perkins (aliases: "Butch Perkins," "Stash," and "theestas") was arrested and then released on bail on Monday. The other defendants are Gregory Cherwonik, 53, of New York, Willie Lambert, 57, of Pennsylvania, and Sean Lovelady, 27, of California.

The four are accused of running their BitTorrent ring from September 2009 to September 2011, where they allegedly would "cam" new movies showing in theaters. While one person was capturing the video, someone else would capture the audio portion in theaters and drive-ins. Then, according to the indictment, the defendants would allegedly "digitally refine" and "edit" the audio and video files before releasing them over BitTorrent.

Specifically, the group is charged with seeding copies of The Men Who Stare At Goats, Avatar, Clash of the Titans, and others. In some cases, they took advantage of the movie theater’s infrared or FM audio system, usually used by people with hearing impairments. Both systems work by transmitting the audio from the control room to individual headsets equipped with a receiver.

In the indictment, Perkins, 40, is quoted as telling Lambert on the group’s message board in July 2010: "I called every local cinema to see what they broadcasted in," adding that "I told them a bs sob story bro…told the manager i had a hearing impaired daughter and she had a phobia about other peoples heads being on there in house equipment so i told them i was going to buy her one, so they would find out and tell me then…"

It appears that the group would often bring their own infrared receivers and would record audio directly from that device. Five days later, Perkins told the group to "wear the IR receiver high around your neck and just put the plugged in recorder in your pocket or somewhere hidden."

Perkins is now scheduled to be arraigned on May 9, 2012 in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia.

87 Reader Comments

Who cares? Could someone PAY you to sit through "Avatar" or whatever the other crappy movies were? This is a non-crime. Greedy suits are out for blood the way there were when VHS first arrived. Or audio cassettes, for that matter.

It's moving that way. Most theaters use an entirely digital preshow advertising system, basically you have secondary DLP projector hooked to a computer that all talk to a server that gets it's data via a special DirecTV channel (that normal receivers can't get to)

The digital movie projectors still get the content delivered on physical media, but that could change someday too.

Who cares? Could someone PAY you to sit through "Avatar" or whatever the other crappy movies were? This is a non-crime. Greedy suits are out for blood the way there were when VHS first arrived. Or audio cassettes, for that matter.

Actually it IS a crime. You may not like that it's a crime, but that means absolutely nothing at all in the real world. If you have a reason of why you think it shouldn't be law, feel free to make an argument of why the United States Congress shouldn't be able to make this law. You'll lose on that issue, but it'd be superior to simply stating "it's not a crime." Yes, it is. Under 17 USC § 506.

I realize that the above sounds contentious. It is, but I wanted to temper it a bit. I have no problem discussing law with people. It's an awesome subject, one that deals with a number of factors. But there is no room in intelligent discussion for patent falsehoods. Saying "it's not a crime" is such a statement. It's a statement of fact that is demonstrably false. Is it a crime? Of course. That's not even a real debate.

Someone is going to have to explain to me one of these days how spending a bunch of money to make something and then asking for people to pay to access it is greedy, but wanting to have access to stuff that cost people money without having to repay them is somehow virtuous.

Don't get me wrong, I think the MPAA and RIAA are greedy, when taken as a whole. I just don't understand how anyone can say "oh, they're the greedy ones" and then go and violate the law so they can be entertained and not have the irony smack them in the face. It's not like you have a fundamental right to not be bored.

I worked at Berkely Cinemas. An elderly couple complained about the audio being too loud, and since they were the only people in that session I went and turned down the volume on the automation unit. When my boss found out he reprimanded me saying "I decide the volume, it's set for maximum 'impact'. Don't ever adjust it".

I think it's to compensate for the incredibly dim projection one sees these days. Are the bulbs *that* expensive?

So we should just let them go to continue their theft and distribution of stolen materials without compensation of any sort to the people who put in thousands of man hours to create it in the first place

Because the only alternative to prison is letting them go with no punishment right?